No one has ever done the Echo Arena, and I'm a Scouser. The momentum I've got and the way MMA is growing in the city and the way MMA fans are - Scousers, as individual fans, are just amazing - it doesn't matter who it's against.

The UFC want me as their champion. The welterweight division needs me as its champion. It's been static for too long. I'll win the title, defend it a couple of times, and then move up to middleweight.

Bisping is a clean athlete, and it comes down to whether you're clean or not. I'm totally against the use of drugs and steroids in the UFC and any performance enhancing drugs. Shows a lot about someone's mental state if they have to do that.

Right now, there are some big names out there for me. The likes of Demian Maia, Rafael dos Anjos, Robbie Lawler, and Wonderboy.

I think it's important that I keep playing international football, whatever level it is.

I don't really know why I started playing as a kid, but I grew up in Queens, New York, not too far from Forest Hills, where they played the U.S. Open in those days. I even got to be a ball boy there. Also, there was a tennis court just a block away from our house, and I'd hang out down there.

Being involved in sports and having a very sport orientated family just helped the transition extremely well. I guess, in a way, your school colleagues saw you out and about, and you were part of the team you were getting into the Australian way, learning the language. The transition was extremely smooth.

As an athlete, the most important thing is the protein that you eat and the things that you put into your body. Without that, it's very hard to function throughout the day.